The sky people had displayed the side of themselves that he had expected to see—violent aggression—and it seemed far worse to him that they had trained it upon one of their own who was small and weaker than those preying upon her if it had been only one to one. To attack her in a pack made them beneath contempt in his eyes.

  He could not think of anything she might possibly have done to warrant such a thing.

  He struggled with it, knowing he was too inclined to view everything that pertained to her in a positive light—because he was drawn to her.

  But that did not mean that he was wrong, he reminded himself.

  Some of his shock and anger began to wane after a time and that made it possible to see things a little more clearly.

  He still did not see that the woman he coveted could possibly have done anything to warrant such an assault. But he acknowledged that she seemed to be a person in a position of some authority within the village of her people, of importance, and thought she might have failed them in some way.

  Which still did not excuse the assault in any way.

  They could not appreciate her, he thought, and, to his mind, it seemed likely that she would remain in danger whatever the case was, whatever was decided upon as punishment if they had already reacted with such vehemence.

  Discarding his reservations about interfering when he not only knew it was not his affair, but he had obligations to his people that took priority to his personal feelings, he moved closer when darkness fell and began to search for a way past their guards and the perimeter they had built.

  He had still not discovered a way that would allow him to get in and then also bring her out again when he spotted furtive movement in the darkness that was clearly out of place.

  A female—carrying something large and bulky.

  She moved to the gate he had been examining and he heard the noises they made to unlock their gates. Instead of opening it, however, she slid something into the locking place and then left—entering the building where his woman had been taken from the back.

  Puzzled, he debated whether to take advantage of the unlocked gate or if it was a trap of some kind, waiting to see what the female was up to.

  Just about the time he decided that he had wasted far too much time already and headed toward the gate, something within the village exploded with the ear splitting sound of a volcanic eruption, flinging debris into the sky in every direction. Large pieces barely missed him. Some smaller pieces did not and pain tore through him with the wounds created by the flying bits.

  Picking himself up with an effort, he looked around to see if he could see what had happened. It was as he was standing, stunned, that the woman—his woman—burst through the door the other female had entered shortly before and rushed toward the gate.

  Hampered by his wounds, he discovered she was moving far faster than he could at the moment—besides being closer to the gate.

  When she burst through it and headed for the line of woods nearest the compound, however, he was not far behind her.

  Chapter Two

  Without consciously processing it, Alayna knew exactly what the sounds behind her were—someone in pursuit.

  More specifically, someone barefoot.

  That pretty much eliminated any possibility that it was anyone from the colony.

  And since she knew from the sounds that it was two legged, that pretty much insured that it was one of the natives.

  And he was right behind her running in the same direction so she was pretty sure she was the target.

  She couldn’t run any faster, though.

  If she could’ve spared the breath, she thought she might have cussed a blue streak.

  But not only couldn’t she. She’d been running low on steam when she first detected the sound and her heart had begun to feel like it would burst from the strain of trying to outrun the thing behind her.

  She barely had the time to acknowledge that threat, though, when she was tackled from behind. They sort of cart-wheeled over one another and she was pretty sure—front the grunts of pain—that she wasn’t the only one that was battered by the collision.

  Even so, he was up and wrestling her into a hold before she could get her bearings.

  Ignoring her backpack, he grabbed her wrists and bound them together before she even grasped his intent. Then he stunned her further by looping her bound arms around his neck—a move that brought her up nearly nose to nose with him for a matter of seconds before he shifted her to his back. Grasping her legs, then, he brought them around his waist and tied her ankles together.

  Still too shocked to even begin to think why he’d done such a thing, Alayna didn’t have time to brace herself when he squatted abruptly and then launched himself upward, landing on the broad limb of a tree they’d been wrestling beside.

  From that point onward, she lost all awareness of anything beyond the fact that he was leaping through the trees with her tied to his back, limb to limb, with barely a pause between the leaps. The sheer terror of it probably didn’t last more than twenty minutes—because she couldn’t maintain that level of fear for longer with the same input, but although it settled to a more manageable level it still preoccupied her mind until, perhaps an hour to two hours later, he began to descend.

  He dropped to his knees when he had landed.

  Alayna’s first inkling that it wasn’t intentional was when he’d managed to untie her ankles and wrists and then pitched forward onto the ground and lost consciousness.

  She didn’t actually realize that just at first.

  She was too preoccupied with the pain of the blood flow returning to her feet and hands. By the time she’d managed to get enough circulation for the pain to subside, it dawned on her that he hadn’t so much as moved since he landed and she flicked a curious glance at him.

  That was when she discovered he was bleeding—sluggishly by that point, but it was clear he’d bled more than a little. Her heart jerked in her chest when she managed to roll him over and discovered that he had at least three wounds that she could see.

  The explosion leapt to mind as soon as she began a mental search for understanding.

  Shrapnel from the gateway.

  Dimly, she recalled that she’d heard footsteps behind her almost from the moment she’d run through the gate.

  But he’d chased her, she thought blankly.

  Why?

  Shaking it, hesitating only briefly, she shrugged her backpack off and dumped the contents out on the ground. Fortunately for him, it was nearing sunrise and there was enough light for her to see if Leah had packed a medical kit.

  Thankfully, she had.

  Alayna grabbed it with shaking hands and searched for antiseptic.

  She saw his eyes were open when she looked at him again.

  An eerie feeling washed over her as she met his alien eyes.

  They looked like cat eyes.

  In fact, he had a very distinctive cat-like appearance for all that he looked very human at the same time.

  “This is going to hurt,” she murmured. Something flickered in his eyes, but she doubted he understood any of what she’d said. She searched her mind for the little of his language that they’d been confident they’d figured out. “Hurt,” she repeated in his language and showed him the antibiotic ointment.

  She felt him tense when she used gauze and the ointment to cleanse the worst of the wounds and then pushed the flesh apart to look for foreign objects. It wasn’t hard to see, unfortunately. Grabbing a pair of tweezers from the med kit, she disinfected it and then sucked in a bracing breath. “This will hurt worse—but it needs to come out.”

  She didn’t meet his gaze that time. She removed the debris as quickly as she could, flooded the wound with disinfectant, used liquid stitches to close it, and then bandaged it.

  He made a grunting noise and emitted a faint hiss of pain, but otherwise was far more stoic than anyone else she knew.

  She supposed she could have comforted herself with the belief that he just didn’t feel it, but she didn’t believe that.

  He felt it—just like he’d felt the wounds when it happened and for hours while he carried her away from the colony.

  She still didn’t know why he had, but the fact that he’d taken to the trees meant they wouldn’t be able to follow her.

  Assuming they came after her, and she wasn’t so sure they would.

  Maybe they’d make a quick perimeter search, but they had serious problems that went well beyond ‘vengeance’.

  Not that she thought retribution wouldn’t be coming for her if they could arrange it, but they had more immediate concerns.

  When she’d finished, she carefully returned the unused bandages and ointments to the med kit and then began loading the contents of the backpack back into the bag.

  There was no weapon.

  Shock prevented her from feeling the rage that came later.

  Leah had served in the military with her. Why would she pack a survival bag and not include any weapon of any description? Not even a knife—which was essential to all sorts of purposes beyond self-defense.

  And, saying she couldn’t get her hands on one—which seemed damned unlikely—why not just mention that she was urging Alayna to run without a damned thing for self-defense?

  There was something seriously fucked up about this scenario. She just wasn’t in any state of mind at the present to figure it out.

  The alien man grasped her wrist with a surprisingly powerful grip when she’d finished repacking the backpack and closed it.

  She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised when he’d carried her and her backpack through the trees.

  But she’d thought he was weak from blood loss.

  And maybe he was, but he was still scary strong.

  But she could see it took an effort for him to get on his feet—and then haul her to hers. She damned near fell on her ass when he did because she still didn’t have decent circulation after the trip through the trees.

  He frowned, studied her for a moment and finally settled and commenced to rubbing her feet, calves and ankles briskly.

  It was so impersonal, she shouldn’t have felt anything at all about it.

  And she actually didn’t at first because it hurt like hell to have the circulation stimulated.

  But pretty much as soon as it stopped stinging with returning sensation, the situation shifted drastically to hyperawareness of his touch, the power of his hands.

  In a matter of minutes, he’d taken her from pain/numbness to acute awareness to the beginnings of arousal.

  He halted abruptly even as that dawned on her.

  The look he sent her made her nipples pucker and stand up, made her throat close, made her feel as if he’d sucked up all the air in their little ‘bubble’.

  He was an incredibly handsome, magnetic male—not just for his species—just period.

  Well, she honestly had no clue if the females of his species found him as magnetic as she did, but there was absolutely no denying her reaction to him.

  And it was a package deal—as much to do with his form—which was lean and well defined muscular at the same time—as it did the features of his face.

  She discovered when she met his gaze again that he had used the time to examine her with equal curiosity if not admiration.

  “Better?” he asked.

  In English—heavily accented but intelligible.

  A shockwave went through her that felt like a physical blow. “You speak English?”

  He shrugged. “Speak Kashon?”

  There was a questioning lilt to the words. She chewed her lip, but the truth was she actually didn’t speak much. They had what they believed were some basics, but they hadn’t contacted the natives.

  Because they’d decided they were too primitive to deal with.

  And since they hadn’t, they also hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to collect the sounds they made and interpret them into language.

  In point of fact, there’d been some doubt that they had an actual language.

  She shrugged finally. “Little,” she responded honestly, wondering if it was a mistake to let him know she knew any of his language. At the same time, she was regretful she didn’t. Otherwise she might have been able to demand some answers.

  Like why he’d taken her and what he meant to do with her.

  She didn’t make the mistake of thinking her playing nurse had changed his mind—whatever his intention had been.

  He studied her for a long moment. “I am not surprised. The arrogance of your people is obvious,” he said dryly.

  She didn’t understand half of what he said, but the half she did understand led her to suspect it was an insult—like a blanket one.

  It made her angry to be lumped in with everyone else. It damned sure hadn’t been her idea to settle the colony without making any attempt to make friends with the natives.

  But she wasn’t really surprised about the hint of hostility. They’d have to be morons not to grasp what had happened and if they had a good understanding, then—well she knew damned well humans wouldn’t stand for that kind of behavior.

  They were lucky they hadn’t been attacked by the natives.

  Under the circumstances she thought them sneaking up to the camp and stealing stuff was pretty minor.

  Obviously the people in charge had made a piss poor assessment of the natives.

  Or maybe it was just their arrogance? They hadn’t actually made an attempt to fairly evaluate the situation or the people. They’d made judgments based on their interest in claiming the world and their projections of wealth to be made. Period.

  So was she about to pay the price for everyone, she wondered, feeling a fresh surge of the fear that had driven her out of the colony to start with?

  How the hell had her life come down to this, she wondered? Suddenly, she’s public enemy number one and responsible for everything in the universe?

  The unfairness of it made her angry, but she was way too scared to vent.

  And unarmed.

  She supposed she should have tried to make a run for it when he’d blacked out. Unfortunately, she hadn’t felt threatened enough for survival instincts to take precedence over empathy.

  She had no idea why.

  Him binding her straight off should have made her feel threatened, but then he’d immediately ‘explained’ that by taking her on his back and taking to the trees.

  She supposed that was it. His actions had registered in her mind as ‘rescue’ not capture—because she’d been running for her life and his taking her into the trees had meant it was damned unlikely anyone from the colony could track her down.

  So—seriously belated survival instincts for someone that had not only served in the armed forces but learned in the school of hard knocks before that since she’d come up in the foster care system.

  She couldn’t blame it on being disarmed because he was so damned pretty, although she thought that might have dazzled her if she’d been able to see him before.

  * * * *

  It was only the cloud of pain that still lingered over him that prevented Zorn from feeling the entire effect of the woman to his senses, that thwarted full arousal as he studied her. She had appealed to his every sense when he had done no more than glimpse her from time to time at a distance as she went about her work in the village of the sky people. But he had not once managed to get close enough, before, to see her as clearly as he could now, to feel the warmth and substance of her aura, catch the scent of her and know it was only her and not a blend of many.

  To capture the essence of her arousal—in reaction to him.

  It was not as much of a relief as he might have thought it would be if he had allowed himself to yield wisdom and wariness to the attraction. She was not one of the people and he had not seen anything that made her people welcome to him.

  That being the case, the powerful attraction became a force he had to resist, to enable the use of his wits.

  Granted, she had surprised him when she hadn’t instantly taken to her heels when he had blacked out. And more so when he discovered she meant to tend the wounds he had sustained when he had lingered too close to the village due to what appeared to be a misguided assumption that she was in need of help.

  Regardless, he was inclined to think it would be wisest to keep his distance—despite the mutual attraction—until he had a better idea of what sort of creature she was. And, just as importantly, some idea of what the intent and inclinations of her people were.

  He could not simply ignore their presence. He was reasonably certain that they posed a threat to him and his people.

  Before he even considered indulging his personal interests he had to know what his people were up against.

  And it was still difficult to dismiss his awareness of her once he had acknowledged it.

  In all honesty, he was not completely certain of what had compelled him to capture her—or even that capture had been his full focus at any point.

  He had only gone to the village of the sky people to observe them as he so often had since their arrival, to study their habits, to try to begin to understand them and their purpose for coming to the land of his people.

  He thought that they had come a very long way. He was not certain of why he thought so except that he had never seen people like them before or heard tell of them and that in and of itself implied a great distance.

  Certainly news of any sort traveled very quickly from one village to another of the Kashon people and even beyond, he suspected, into the lands of their enemies—the Aton and the Pilandre.

  They would have to be from beyond the sea.

  Or perhaps even from beyond the stars that they saw at night since they had come from the sky, though he was not at all certain he could believe that.

  None that he knew of had crossed the sea and returned again to tell tales of what lay beyond so it was not beyond the realms of possibility.

 

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